Future of Goods Movement

Future of Goods Movement Contents Introduction3 Context4 1 Understanding the freight system Global goods movement systems mapRoadRailShippingAir FreightPipelinesUnaddressed challenges9101316192123 2 The future drivers of change Net zero and the need to manage overconsumption and wasteResilienceRole of different nations in manufacturing and consumptionTechnology and changing business and consumption modelsEnergy and industrial materials transition 2631353944 3 Future Implications and OpportunitiesScenarios to inform long-term decision making and investment in freightnetworkA High Growth WorldA Consumption-Conscious WorldFuture mode-specific implicationsWhat are the prospects for shipping?What are the prospects for rail?What are the prospects for road freight (HGVs/LGVs)?What are the prospects for aviation?What are the prospects for pipelines?54565862666974788184 86 Moving Forward Acknowledgements Endnotes89 Why do we need to think about the future of goods movement?Introduction The key contextual drivers for goods movement –consumption, trade, manufacturing, and energy – are allwitnessing major transformation and will change therequirement for and demands on today’s freightnetwork. Due to segmented decision-making andpriority-setting, the freight network serving mostregions of the world today is a highly precarioussystem, poised to experience significant disruption withincreasing frequency. Understanding the changes andshifts that the future of goods movement is likely to besubject to, and the priorities and processes whichshould be in place, will be critical to the globaleconomy and a more sustainable planet. Dialogue andconsideration of this system must emerge from thebackground and into the spotlight for both everydaypeople and the decisionmakers planning the future ofcities, regions, access to resources and infrastructure. When most people think of transport, they think abouttheir everyday experience using trains, buses, cars, orwalking and cycling to go to work, school, the shops,and other local and far-off destinations. Transport isabout meeting their daily needs, getting access toservices and goods, and meeting family and friends. However, there is another side to transport that is just asimportant, but which gets far less attention. Everyactivity we engage in to sustain our lives, businesses,leisure, health, and relationships is facilitated by goodsand resources – materials, products, food, fuel, energy,assets. These goods are the end products of highlycomplex and largely invisible supply chain networks,all relying on extensively coordinated operations andtransport networks comprising of multiple modes ofdelivery. Typically, these behind-the-scenes transportsystems only gain mainstream attention when there is acritical break down in the network, and populations andkey industries are suddenly cut off from the dailyresources they otherwise expect uninterrupted accessto. The Ever Given, a container ship which blocked theSuez Canal for nearly a week in 2021 earned headlinesinternationally – highlighting both the intricacy ofglobal freight and its integral value to economiesworldwide. This one incident alone was estimated tohave held up $9 billion in global trade value each dayof the blockage.1 This report aims to highlight the importance of takingnote of and rethinking how we plan for the future of thefreight transport system – the long-distance movementof goods. We take a global perspective, but with someregion-specific focus on the dynamics playing out inthe UK and EU freight and transport markets. We arguethat a focus on the often invisible, but fundamentallyintegral freight systems which are responsible fordelivering secure access to the goods and resources weall rely on is particularly crucial at this time. Emerging challenges for the movement of goodsContext requirements and risks. This private-market drivennature of many freight networks globally and withinnations has led to an overall system in most countriesand regions which has developed piecemeal andorganically. Freight transport moves goods (materials, products,foods, etc.) from a location where they are available toanother location where they are required. The freightworld is complex in terms of who operates, invests, andcontrols the network for different modes of transport,the types of goods carried by different modes, and thekey characteristics of goods which travel over differentparts of the freight network (origin/destination, volume,value, etc.). There are usually many different types ofstakeholders involved in the process of deliveringgoods to their final destination - from providing andmaintaining the necessary infrastructure, through torunning services to process and transfer goods acrossinternational borders. Over several decades, this fractional development andthe absence of an overarching national or regionalfreight strategy in most countries has arguably made thefreight sector highly vulnerable to major disr